Thursday, 12 February 2015

Here's the official Season 5 trailer (spoiler alert: includes S5 footage)

And about time, too. We still don't have a better release date than "Spring 2015", which makes me think it's unlikely it'll be before Easter. But on this evidence, it's going to be worth the wait. The animation looks great, the story looks "epic adventure-y" and we do indeed get a proper callback to one of the defining moments of Season 4. It looks as though those who yearn for a return to the S1 days are going to be disappointed, but those of us who loved S4 could be in for a real treat. Now, Hasbro: get on and give us a proper release date!

7 comments:

I feel like I'm unfortunately on the disappointed side of the spectrum. Not because this doesn't look interesting, but I loved the gentle, low-stakes show that MLP was at the beginning. It doesn't need "World On The Edge Of Disaster" stuff in it too often in my book, but I believe I'm in the minority.

That said, I certainly don't hate drama or serious events. I just feel that it's difficult to pull off quality episodes about serious and meaningful things when your target audience is four to eight. Not that I think those kids can't handle it. It's just that adults seem to think kids are all morons and need to be spoken down to in order for them to understand even the simplest things. If you are going to write like that, then simple episodes shine.

Couple that with MLP's tendency to want to force too much story into their arcs, and the more serious tone worries me. This all looks very adventure-driven and dramatic, so I'm going to be let down if they try and shove all of this into half an hour like Magical Mystery Cure or Keep Calm and Flutter On. Some ideas are just too big to develop properly in that kind of time frame, and MLP is very guilty of that.

It's a fair point, and I too sometimes feel nostalgic about the days of episodes like "Fall Weather Friends" or "The Show Stoppers". On the other hand, I've made my peace with the change; as I said in reply to someone else recently, it's a different show now to what it was four years ago, but that's not the same as saying it's a worse show.

As far as the season premiere itself goes, it'll surely be a two-parter. I can't see why they'd have any reason to pull a "Magical Mystery Cure" in a full-length season. I'm also not entirely convinced that everything in this trailer is from the premiere at all, though we'll see.

Mind you, I seem to be the only Fluttershy fan in existence who actually likes "Bats!", which 90% of the fandom seems to detest, so what do I know? :P

I actually ended up making my first proper blog post about it: https://codingismagic.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/quick-thoughts-on-the-mlp-season-5-trailer/

The show is continuing to change as the characters change, and perhaps the audience too is getting on average older. I still think slice-of-life for pony works better, in general, than adventure-based episodes, but it would be exciting if the mane 6 were placed in real peril and Twilight can unleash some of her latent magical power. Basically I wouldn't say no if they turned MLP into a magical girl anime :D.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this trailer. I don't in any way mean that it's bad. Quite the opposite - this makes the fifth season seem very promising, and fascinating! But (and this is undoubtedly intentional) quite what has happened and what that mysterious table map is all about... well, that is going to be very interesting, I'm sure. And those grinning ponies are very strange. (I do like that comment, something like "something isn't right here." That's one way of putting it...)

And yes, the animation and particularly the lighting effects/shadows seem to be improved even on S4 in places, so that proves the team aren't just resting on their laurels, so to speak. :)